[182] The description of Siegfried’s love for Kriemhild is just touched by the chivalric love, which exists in Wolfram’s Parzival, in Gottfried’s Tristan, and of course in their French models. See post, Chapter XXIII. For example, as he first sees her who was to be to him “beide lieb und leit,” he becomes “bleich unde rôt”; and at her greeting, his spirit is lifted up: “dô wart im von dem gruoze vil wol gehoehét der muot.” And the scene is laid in May (Nibelungenlied, Aventiure V., stanzas 284, 285, 292, 295).
[183] A convenient edition of the Kudrun is Pfeiffer’s in Deutsche Klassiker des Mittelalters (Leipzig, 1880). Under the name of Gudrun it is translated into modern German by Simrock, and into English by M. P. Nichols (Boston, 1899).
[184] Kudrun, viii. 558. Whatever may have been the facts of German life in the Middle Ages, the literature shows respect for marriage and woman’s virtue. This remark applies not only to those works of the Middle High German tongue which are occupied with themes of Teutonic origin, but also to those—Wolfram’s Parzival, for example—whose foreign themes do not force the poet to magnify adulterous love. When, however, that is the theme of the story, the German writer, as in Gottfried’s Tristan, does not fail to do it justice.
Willmans, in his Leben und Dichtung Walthers von der Vogelweide (Bonn, 1882), note 1a on page 328, cites a number of passages from Middle High German works on the serious regard for marriage held by the Germans. Even the German minnesingers sometimes felt the contradiction between the broken marriage vow and the ennobling nature of chivalric love. See Willmans, ibid. p. 162 and note 7.
[185] Kudrun, xx. 1013.
[186] Kudrun, xxx. 1632 sqq.
[187] As to the Parzival, and Walter’s poems, see post, Chapters XXIV. XXVI.
[188] Ante, Chapter I.
[189] It is not known when Teutons first entered Denmark and the Scandinavian peninsula. Although non-Teutonic populations may have preceded them, the archaeological remains do not point clearly to a succession of races, while they do indicate ages of stone, bronze, and iron (Sophus Müller, Nordische Altertumskunde). The bronze ages began in the Northlands a thousand years or more before Christ. In course of time, beautiful bronze weapons show what skill the race acquired in working metals not found in Scandinavia, but perhaps brought there in exchange for the amber of the Baltic shores. The use of iron (native to Scandinavia) begins about 500 B.C. A progressive facility in its treatment is evinced down to the Christian Era. Then a foreign influence appears—Rome. For Roman wares entered these countries where the legionaries never set foot, and native handicraft copied Roman models until the fourth century, when northern styles reassert themselves. The Scandinavians themselves were unaffected by Roman wares; but after the fifth century they began to profit from their intercourse with Anglo-Saxons and Irish.
[190] It is said that some twenty-five thousand Arabian coins, mostly of the Viking periods, have been found in Sweden.